TUESDAY COMMENTARY: PREDICTABLY UNPREDICTABLE

(Listen daily for the Rod Pedersen Commentary on Cat Country 98, Rock 98.5 FM & LTD Radio)

It’s Tuesday and that means it’s time for this week’s edition of the Good, the Great & the Ugly!

First the good: NHL and junior fans alike were on pins and needles for months – even years – waiting for Monday night’s NHL Draft Lottery, where we’d finally learn which team would land the coveted Connor Bedard at #1.

It’s … the Chicago Blackhawks.

I can live with that! It’s an iconic franchise, they’ve got nowhere to go but up, and it’s a major U.S. market which should provide Connor with some lucrative off-ice marketing opportunities.

There are some places I’d have rather seen him go, and others where I really didn’t want to see him go. So Chicago is … good.

Next the great: It will be the Seattle Thunderbirds versus the Winnipeg ICE for the Western Hockey League championship. Seattle polished off the Blazers in Kamloops 4-2 Monday night to achieve the league final.

The ICE have been waiting since sweeping the Blades and just announced they’re moving into Canada Life Centre – home of the Jets – for the WHL Final. That is absolutely great.

So too is the fact the Centennial Cup opens Thursday in Portage and the SJHL is repped by the Battlefords North Stars whom will face Ontario’s Kam River Fighting Walleye in their first game Thursday at 10:30 am Sask Time. The Stars got a royal send-off Monday morning and it doesn’t get better than this.

And lastly, the ugly: In the summertime we’ll look back at the analytics and stats and figure out just how and why NHL playoff hockey has changed so much.

For instance, the nightly fortunes of the Oilers and Maple Leafs are enough to give their fans a coronary. Up and down like a toilet seat!

They’re so maddeningly inconsistent compared to their forefathers of the game which makes your betting slips truly ugly.

But here’s the positive: Just like junior hockey, it’s predictably unpredictable and there’s nothing ugly about that.

That’s today’s Rod Pedersen Commentary

(The Rod Pedersen Show airs daily at 12 pm ET on Game+ TV, WQEE and Streaming)